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Prologue
Three years ago
LeAnn “Killer” Keller was hung over. But because she was almost nineteen, she couldn’t tell her parents that. As far as they knew, she had been tucked in her bed last night, dreaming of winning the first gold belt buckle in the Women’s Professional Rodeo Circuit of America’s bronc-riding event. Instead, she had been attempting to shake her “America’s Sweetheart” reputation by trying to attract the interest of rodeo bad boy Luke “Mick” Mickleson. Except Mick had only been interested in getting her drunk and trying to get into her pants.
Her older sister Reba, thankfully, had gone looking for her and had sat with her while LeAnn puked on her shoes and cried when Mick went home with Debbi Peterson instead.
Walking over to the vending area, LeAnn got a Coke and hoped that it would settle her stomach. She glared over at the barrel riders, laughing and cheering each other on. She used to be a barrel racer, a damned good one too. But she had stopped competing in that event so that she could concentrate on the new bronc-riding title.
Reba had cleaned her up and snuck her back into the Winnebago they all lived in, without waking her parents. LeAnn owed her one. She owed all her sisters for putting up with her this year. Her parents were crazy overprotective and when LeAnn hit eighteen, she had let the freedom go to her head a bit.
She had three older sisters: Reba, Dolly, and Loretta. Her parents were huge fans of country-western singers. They named her and her sisters after legends in the business. Her oldest sister, Loretta, was back home in Paris, Texas, holding down the fort and going through a nasty divorce. But Dolly and Reba had been traveling with LeAnn and their parents to all of her rodeos for the last few years.
“You’re lucky it was me and not Dolly who found you,” Reba said to her this morning. It was true, too.
Reba was a veterinarian. It had been very handy to have her on the road. She’d had a hellacious experience at her last job. LeAnn still didn’t know all the details, but Reba had felt threatened enough to quit a good-paying job to live in the Winnebago with them. It must’ve been pretty bad.
Dolly worked in public relations. This past year, she’d been working on building LeAnn’s social media accounts and trying to leverage likes, clicks and other stuff into paying sponsors.
She had carefully crafted LeAnn into being the new face of the WPRC. So far it had gotten them some mid-range sponsors. But LeAnn needed to win this final competition to attract the really big dogs. She should have had it in the bag, but her rankings had slipped ever since her eighteenth birthday. Too many parties and too many late nights had allowed Merry Grayson to inch her way up to the number-two spot.
“You don’t look so good,” Dolly said, coming up to where LeAnn was grimly holding on to the fence while contemplating her poor decision to go out last night.
“I’m all right.” LeAnn swallowed the acid burning in the back of her throat.
She dodged away from Dolly’s hand on her forehead.
“You don’t seem to be running a fever.”
“I said I’m fine.” All LeAnn wanted to do was curl up and sleep for a week. But she had less than a half hour before she rode her heart out in the saddle-bronc competition.
“Merry’s on top of her game today. She’s kicking ass in breakaway roping.”
“Wonderful,” LeAnn grumbled. She regretted giving up competing in all of the other rodeo events so she could concentrate on winning the saddle-bronc category.
Merry Grayson was tough to beat on a normal day. One half of the “Wild Grayson Sisters,” Merry was a hell-raiser, an ass-kicker, and everything LeAnn secretly wished she had the balls to be. Instead, LeAnn had become an overprotected baby sister and a dutiful daughter who never talked back or broke the rules out of fear of being hauled back to Paris, Texas, and all those beauty pageants her mother insisted she compete in.
LeAnn had been pushing her luck with her parents, though, ever since she told them after being crowned Miss Texas Teen, that she’d rather be a barrel racer than a beauty contest queen. Her mother had been heartbroken. Her father had been relieved. But then all their enthusiasm shifted from pageants to rodeos. She felt like their pet project sometimes, instead of their daughter. Miss Texas Teen USA became Killer Keller.
Then LeAnn turned eighteen and the knowledge that her parents couldn’t control her life was headier and more intoxicating than those tequila shots she had done last night.
Her stomach heaved at the thought of tequila.
“Maybe she’ll be too tired from roping and barrel racing to put in a good day on the bronc,” LeAnn said hopefully.
“Just do the best you can,” Dolly said. “We’re all rooting for you.” With a quick squeeze, Dolly left her to her thoughts. She was probably off to take pictures for the WPRC’s Instagram account or something.
LeAnn shook herself out of her funk and tossed her empty soda cup into the trash. She wandered over to where the bull riders were hanging out, waiting for their turn to test their skills against the ornery beasts. That was her next goal. Once she got the buckle for winning the bronc-riding event, she’d start practicing on bulls. It would only be a matter of time before the WPRC opened that category up for women to compete.
Craning her neck, she tried to see if Mick was around, but it didn’t look like it. Instead, she was treated to another form of eye candy—Dylan Porter was tugging on leather gloves and strapping on his chest protector. His extra-wide chest protector. Dylan wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous like Mick, but he had a sexy smile and warm bedroom eyes that captivated her, always had. She swooned at them the first time she saw him at the rodeo when she was sixteen and he was twenty-one. He hadn’t paid her a lick of attention then, and now that she was old enough, LeAnn wasn’t sure how to talk to someone like him. She must have been staring because he looked up and caught her ogling him.
“You all right, Killer?” he asked.
Dylan had a sexy drawl that made her shiver. She swallowed hard and nodded. Talking with him wasn’t like talking with Mick. Dylan didn’t flirt or tease. He treated her like a professional and like an athlete, but he looked at her like she was still a kid.
Except for that one time.
On her eighteenth birthday, her family had thrown her a surprise party at a local VFW hall in the rodeo town they were in. Mick had been there, but it was Dylan’s slow once-over that had made LeAnn weak at the knees. She’d give anything to have him look at her like that again. LeAnn often thought about that dance and how safe and content she had felt while in Dylan’s arms. But after one dance, Dylan had disappeared.
